Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition

Flama

Oh yeah. I recommend it. The story is genuinely exceptional, and i frequently forgot my companions weren't real people. I got angry with them, i felt joy for them, and their ending slides had me feeling sappy. I cannot stress enough how rewarding this story is (except you nenio, your side quest can piss off.) It helps to be familiar with pathfinder lore, but it isn't necessary. The story, narrative, and other non-gameplay focused aspects would make an amazing book, and I'd love to play this on actual tabletop. 9.8/10. Graphics/Art Design: The graphics aren't anything special, but its a top down RPG. Good enough to not make me bored of the pretty colors, not so great i spend a lot of time admiring the scenery. Some areas of the game are incredibly frustrating to navigate at times, due to either confusing layouts, textures that are too similar, or being Act 4. 7/10. Gameplay: The gameplay can be exceptionally punitive on the harder difficulties. Heed it's warning about selecting anything Core or above. If you have never played a tabletop game, try one of the lower ones. If you are experienced with newer editions of DND and pathfinder, i suggest up to Daring. But only if you are experienced with older editions of DND and Pathfinder should you attempt Core for a first run. The mechanics of this system are very punitive with their debuffs, and every single one requires a specific spell to remove. Aside that, the game offers both real time combat and turn-based combat. I used real-time for most encounters where i was significantly stronger than the enemies, and turn-based when tactics mattered even a little. The abilities, spells, leveling, and other progression are quite fun. However there was a noticeable lack of new magic items in the final act of the game, so your build might stagnate a bit unless you're playing particular builds, namely necromancers and illusion specialists. The combat itself is fun, if top-down RPGs are your thing. In addition, there is a strategy wargame element in the Crusades that was quite enjoyable as well. However, there are a *lot* of hidden variables that determine what kind of ending you get. Achieving everyone's "good" ending slide practically requires a walkthrough, because selecting the wrong dialogue in act 2, or choosing a dialogue you think is correct, locks you out of certain choices in later acts. Several of these choices seem to be completely innocuous and don't feel like they should really have an impact beyond minor approval points, but one of these choices completely locks you out of a companion in act 4. Overall i had a great time. 8.2/10 Overall, i thoroughly enjoyed this product, so much so that i will be looking at all future and past owlcat games to add to my library. The story is exceptional, the companions are all fantastic, varied, and well written (except you nenio), the graphics are good enough, and the gameplay suits my niche interests. The ending of the game also feels climactic, even if the final fight is a little annoying (at least in the route i chose). The romances are good (But playing cards with you DOESN'T MEAN I WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOU SOSIEL), and I was genuinely slightly emotional upon completing the game, and I can't wait to start a second playthrough, to choose one of the evil routes. Overall; 9.3/10. Worth full price, which I don't say lightly, as i buy everything on discount.

What a game. I thought only a few games could come close to the feeling I got playing Baldur's Gate 3, but after 80-ish hours, this game really surprised me and gave me a great experience. First, the good things: 1. Morality of choices. The game really makes you think and weigh the decisions that arise, not just being a "good" or "evil" character, but making you consider certain aspects. Sometimes the plot pushes you toward evil because you've been betrayed multiple times, or because terrible things happened to people you tried to help. And sometimes doing good things doesn't lead to a good outcome, no matter how hard you try. This is great not only in terms of storytelling, but also in terms of life and what we expect from people. 2. Items and builds. Oh my God, so much fun. I loved every bit of theorycrafting, making sure my party and my companions were set up well so we could beat the enemies. This was truly wonderful. That said, some things could be improved — namely a better guide when it comes to choosing feats. Don't recommend Point Blank Shot to me if I'm running a Cavalier / Two-Handed Fighter. 3. Companions. Honestly much better than in the first game, both in their storylines — although those sometimes felt bleak — and in their interactions. I don't always run a full NPC party because I love custom characters, but the ones that stood out and made me want to run them were: Greybor, because nobody is ever only there for the money. Regill, I love this guy and the way his story resolves. Sosiel, how to stay good and why that matters. Ember, literally a saint. 4. Dialogue options. I loved them most of the time. They genuinely gave me the sense that my decisions mattered, and they make me want to start another playthrough immediately. 5. Equipment. This ties into my second point, but this game on Core and above is not easy, and thinking carefully about equipment is genuinely rewarding. For example, I found a longspear that let me instantly kill almost any enemy whenever I charged. That was incredibly satisfying, because it meant the feats I'd picked made my build come together, and I was proud of it. The same went for equipping my other characters — my party was heavily melee, which led to some insane moments where everyone would chain attacks and attacks of opportunity and delete the entire enemy group. Man, it was good. 6. Story. The story is amazing. It's so well put together, so well plot-driven, so well thought out. I think it's a big improvement over the previous game's story, because everyone here has motivation. The only characters without one are the truly evil ones — Deskari, Baphomet and certain lesser figures. As Tolkien wrote, evil cannot pity, and so when we feel ourselves losing our sense of pity, we are straying onto the path of evil. That said, here are a few things the game should improve on: 1. Crusade mode. Not that immersive. A lot of it comes down to waiting for your troops to spawn, then waiting for them to arrive, then waiting for your energy to replenish so you can attack. The building system is also worse than in the previous game, as is the impact it has later on. And worst of all, the Heroes of Might and Magic-style combat just isn't very good — spells are far too powerful, and most fights feel like a formality. I found that lacklustre. Overall, a great experience. I'm glad they improved so many things: builds, classes, story, loading screens, and companions with more depth — companions who are purely evil, purely neutral, or somewhere in between. The alignment system was very well executed. Huge applause to Owlcat. Can't wait to start Rogue Trader. 9/10

Overall recommendable, but prepare to invest a lot of time into it to go through all the content, and effort if you actually want to master it. If you have not played "WH40K: Rogue Trader" (later game by the same developer) I would recommend looking there first as it is a much more pleasant experience, and both games have a lot in common (despite vastly different settings). By far the most important thing to understand about this game is its approach to difficulty - it is heavily reliant on "all or nothing" luck, and the "skill" this game rewards is turning as much of that luck as possible in your favour, and avoiding it entirely at best. To not go into details of the game's mechanics, everything essentially boils down to a dice roll, and the dice is less in your favour the more "difficult" the game wants to be. At the worst of it, you will have the lovely experience of watching your characters skipping all their turns/missing everything while the enemies curbstomp them into the ground. The "skill" this game rewards is identifying functional builds (it is extremely easy to make non-functional builds due to a myriad of options) and actually useful items. The "difficulty" is so bad that the "normal" difficulty - the one would assume is the "recommended" one - already has "weaker enemies" instead of "normal" ones. The game is not particularly good at explaining how to make your builds "good", but very good at punishing them for being "bad." Close second is that there is a _ton_ of boring filler time. The game basically revolves around letting your characters "camp" so that they can rest, and the more difficult the game is, the more you will have to do that to stay in fighting condition. This completely breaks the pacing as the story can be going through some crisis that must be resolved "here and now," while in the game you are casually camping for multiple hours every other fight. In the "crusader mode"/"overworld travel mode" you have to move "pieces" (your armies and player party) on a big, and very linear map. It is kinda cool at first, but very quickly turns tedious. The next big negative is the "crusader mode", the "second half" to the CRPG game. It is terrible, simple as; I can not say anything positive about it at all. If it was a game of its own, I would call it "torture". It is basically a much worse version of HoMM, but the enemies get all the fun units, and you get all the boring units. There seems to be a way to turn it to automatic mode to bypass it, but I am not sure if that would let you get the "best" ending (there are accounts that it would, but I have not tested personally). Finally, the game just can't make good puzzles and secrets. There are a lot of them, and I think there was not a single one I liked. This is one of those games that you should do with an online guide if you want the "better" endings (or have a commitment to replay the game). In particular, the "secret" ending is by far the most interesting and satisfying narrative conclusion to the story, but you can easily lock yourself out of it because you didn't do something that the game only hints you at after the fact (and the first time the game even starts hinting in its direction is after you could have missed some steps, like 20 hours in). For those who want pointers, requirements for the "secret" ending and the locations of elven pages are the most significant offenders and the guides for those should be followed from the start lest you find out that you had missed something ~100h ago and now can't complete. Luckily, a lot of the negative aspects can be significantly toned down with an easier difficulty. I would actually recommend starting on "casual" or even "story" and working up (if you feel like learning the mechanics and letting the game challenge you), rather than starting on higher difficulties and working down. Personally, I would have quit ~30 hours in if I did not switch to casual, and I have never felt the need to turn it back up again. Of the positives, I would say the story is basically the only significant one. It was good enough to make me sit through ~150h gameplay to see how it ended (admittedly, I am easily hooked). Companions in particular felt like they had actual personalities and lives to them - all of them had their agendas and actually felt "alive", like they are part of the game's world and react to the protagonist in their own way (and sometimes in significant ways like leaving your party or trying to kill you or betray you) rather than be convenient "yes" men (this is somewhat of a double-edged sword, however, as depending on how you play and your party composition, their "liveliness" can ruin your party formation, but you can always just create custom characters or roll with it). There is a ton of replayability: a lot of classes with multiple variations each (and free multiclassing), multiple "mythic paths" that significantly affect your identity and approach to the story (e.g., a lich turns his city into a necropolis). DLCs are very opt-in. Most of them do not seem to be available during the main story (you import your save into standalone campaigns or make custom characters). Only "A Dance of Masks," "The Last Sarkorians," and "Treasure of the Midnight Isles" are integrated into the story. The first 2, masks and sarkorians, are unavailable as standalone, and add interesting enough content (sarkorians in particular adds a new companion and classes) where they would warrant a look. The last one, treasure, is a really boring "dungeon crawler" (though, admittedly, for standalone it can be interesting as a build tester) with its only significance for the main story being adding some leeway to the secret ending (but not required if you follow online guides). It might be a good idea to pick up only the base game first and see if you like it before getting the DLCs (plus, the game has good replayability so doing another full playthrough might be desirable if the game lands). Overall, this game can demand a lot of your attention and patience to see it through. I would struggle to recommend it at full price (especially the DLCs), but it usually goes on a 75% discount that makes the offer more compelling.

I came from Baldur's Gate because I wanted something similar but new. If you like BG3 or Divinity, you'll like this game. I just got past the beginning portion and it really picks up after the tutorial. I can see myself sinking a lot of time into this. I find the Pathfinder system a lot more complicated than the DnD or Divinity systems though.

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Very good story and characters, very customizable. Fantastic story 10/10